It
is interesting to read what Swami Vivekananda said about Buddhism. It is also
the opinion of many other learned intellectuals of all times. This is part of
Swami Vivekananda’s world famous speck at the Parliament of Religions. This was
delivered on 26th of September, 1893 and I have taken this portion
from The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda:
Buddhism,
the Fulfillment of Hinduism
I
am not a Buddhist, as you have heard, and yet I am. If China, or Japan, or
Ceylon follow the teachings of the Great Master, India worships him as God
incarnate on earth. You have just now heard that I am going to criticize
Buddhism, but by that I wish you to understand only this. Far be it from me to
criticize him whom I worship as God incarnate on earth. But our views about
Buddha are that he was not understood properly by his disciples. The relation
be- tween Hinduism (by Hinduism, I mean the religion of the Vedas) and what is
called Buddhism at the present day, is nearly the same as between Judaism and
Christianity. Jesus Christ was a Jew, and Shakya Muni was a Hindu. The Jews
rejected Jesus Christ, nay, crucified him, and the Hindus have accepted Shakya
Muni as God and worship him. But the real difference that we Hindus want to
show between modern Buddhism and what we should understand as the teachings of
Lord Buddha, lies principally in this: Shakya Muni came to preach nothing new.
He also, like Jesus, came to fulfill and not to destroy. Only, in the case of
Jesus, it was the old people, the Jews, who did not understand him, while in
the case of Buddha, it was his own followers who did not realize the importance
of his teachings, As the Jew did not understand the fulfillment of the Old
Testament, so the Buddhist did not understand the fulfillment of the truths of
the Hindu religion. Again, I repeat, Shakya Muni came not to destroy, but he
was the fulfillment, the logical conclusion, the logical development of the religion
of the Hindus.
The
religion of the Hindus is divided into two parts, the ceremonial and the
spiritual; the spiritual portion is specially studied by the monks.
In
that there is no caste. A man from the highest caste and a man from the lowest
may become a monk in India and the two castes become equal. In the religion
there is no caste; caste is simply a social institution, Shakya Muni himself
was a monk, and it was his glory that he had the large-heartedness to bring out
the truths how the hid- den Vedas and throw them broadcast all over the world.
He was the first being in the world who brought missionarizing into practice -
nay, he was the first to conceive the idea of proselytizing.
The
great glory of the Master lay in his wonderful sympathy for everybody,
especially for the ignorant and the poor. Saint of his disciples were Brahmins.
When Buddha was teaching, Sanskrit was no more the spoken language in India. It
was then only in the books of the learned. Some of the Buddha's Brahmin
disciples wanted to translate his teachings into Sanskrit, but he distinctly
told them, "I am for the poor, for the people: let me speak in the tongue
of the people." And so to this day the great bulk of his teachings are in
the vernacular of that day in India.
Whatever
may be the position of philosophy, whatever may the position of metaphysics, so
long as there is such a thing as death in the world, so long as there is such a
thing as weakness in the human heart, so long as there is a cry going out of
the heart of man in his very weakness, there shall be a faith in God.
On
the philosophic side, the disciples of the Great Master dashed themselves
against the eternal rocks of the Vedas and could not crush them, and on the
other side they took away from the nation that eternal God to which everyone,
man or woman, clings so fondly. And the result was that Buddhism had to die a
natural death in India. At the present day there is not one who calls himself a
Buddhist in India, the land of its birth.
But
at the same time, Brahminism lost something - that reforming zeal, that
wonderful sympathy and charity for everybody, that wonderful leaven which
Buddhism had brought to the masses and which had rendered Indian society so
great that a Greek historian who wrote about India of that time was led to say
that no Hindu was known to tell untruth and no Hindu woman was known to be
unchaste.
Hinduism
cannot live without Buddhism, nor Buddhism without Hinduism. Then realize what
the separation has shown to us, that the Buddhists cannot stand without the
brain and philosophy of the Brahmins, nor the Brahmin without the heart of the
Buddhist. This separation between the Buddhists and the Brahmins is the cause
of the downfall of India. That is why India is populated by three hundred millions
of beg- gars, and that is why India has been the slave of conquerors for the
last thousand years. Let us then join the wonderful intellect of the Brahmin
with the heart, the noble soul, the wonderful humanizing power of the Great
Master.
